A: Yes. Run the peercast client, then set streamripper to
listen to the local stream.

Q: Can streamripper record Live365 streams?

A: Yes, but it cannot separate tracks for you.

Live365 threatened a lawsuit if Streamripper did not disable ripping from their site. There's more about this in 'History (old news)' (in the menu on the left) if you scroll down a bit, including the cease and desist letter.

Q: Does streamripper work with Winamp 2?

A: Yes. The streamripper plugin works with both Winamp 2 and Winamp 5. There is a separate plugin for Winamp 3, but this is no longer supported.

Q: How can I make streamripper rip to a single large file instead of a lot of little files?

A: Use the -a flag to rip to a single large file.
Use the -A flag to disable the creation of the little files.

In the winamp plugin, you would need to check "Rip to single file" and
uncheck "Rip to separate files."

A: Don't worry; it happens to lots of guys. Load up Winamp, then look for a little 'SR' icon in your system tray. Double click on that and
Streamripper should come up. This happens because when you "close" Streamripper it hides itself in the system tray.
Maybe this isn't the best way to do it, but I can't think of a better way.

If that doesn't work goto the '\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins' directory and delete the sripper.ini file (Streamripper has
been known to position itself outside of the viewable window), this will reset any settings, including the window position.

Q: How does Streamripper know when to split the tracks?

A: The track data is sent at a set interval called
the 'MetaInt' or meta-data interval. The rate of updates
varies, but it's usually 8,192 or 24,576.

The 'S' represents where the tracks actually switch, 'M1' and 'M2' are
Meta updates. In this diagram M1 would read 'Track A', and M2 would
read 'Track B'. So our best guess is that somewhere
between M1 and M2 the track actually changed.

Streamripper then tries to detect a silent spot between the tracks.
It decodes the mp3 data between M1 and M2 and looks at the
volume. This works reasonably well for streams that do not
use crossfading between tracks.

If there is not a clear silent point, the splitting point will
probably not be so accurate. This happens when the
station uses crossfading, or for some reason the
silence between the tracks just wasn't very clear.

Q: How can I deal with streams that send bogus metadata.

A: Some streams send metadata that does not contain
track information, which I call bogus metadata.
Examples of bogus metadata include
station announcements, or advertisements for future shows.
In winamp, the bogus metadata is useful, because it
appears briefly in the display window. But it can cause
problems because streamripper thinks the track has changed.

There are two strategies for dealing with bogus metdata.
The first strategy is to record the songs to a single file.
Then, you can easily delete the metadata from the associated
cue file afterward.

The second strategy is to use the parse rules to filter out the
bogus metadata. To do this, you need to edit the file
parse_rules.txt that came with the distribution.
Then you need to add rules that describe the metadata
you want to ignore. Below is an example of a
rule that ignores metadata:

# Ignore metadata that begins with "A suivre"
# The leading "m" says this is a match rule
# The trailing "e" means drop the metadata
m/^A suivre:/e

Q: My username is my email address with an "@" sign.
How can I rip password protected streams?

A: You have to "percent-encode" the "@" sign.
Percent encoding works by subsituting "%XX" for the character
you want to replace, where XX is the ASCII hex code for the character.
In the case of "@", the ASCII code is hex 40. So you replace "%40"
for @ in the username.

For example, if my username is greg@example.com, I would use the
following URL:

http://greg%40example.com:password@server:port

Q: Why do I get 'SR_ERROR_NOT_SHOUTCAST_STREAM' when trying to connect to my stream?

A: There are a few reasons why one might get this error:

It's not a Shoutcast stream, but it's some other type of stream Streamripper doesn't know how to handle.

The stream is blocking players that don't have a 'Winamp/2.x' UserAgent.

The first thing to try is changing the Streamripper UserAgent setting
to something else (try 'WinampMPEG/5.0' or 'iTunes/4.7 (Macintosh; N; PPC)'
or 'RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)'). If this doesn't work, right click
on the stream Playlist entry in winamp and select
'File Info' and make sure it's a Shoutcast stream.

Q: Why do I get 'SR_ERROR_CANT_CREATE_FILE' when trying to rip a stream?

A: There are a few reasons why one might get this error:

You're using a version older than 1.60.6. If so, please upgrade.

You're using 1.63-beta-2. Please use a different version.

You're ripping a stream with non-English song titles. If this is
the case, you can try making sure that your default locale (regional
settings in windows) matches the language of the stream you are ripping.

A: You're running windows 95. You should get the Winsock2 update from Microsoft. That should fix it.

Q: Where's the source?

A: To get the complete source (including winamp plugin),
download from the sourceforge CVS repository.
Instructions on how to retrieve the
source from CVS can be found here. If you don't
want to deal with CVS, the Unix versions includes the source with the
download, but this doesn't include the winamp plugin code.

Q: Why don't I get separate files?

A: Probably because the stream doesn't contain meta-data. Steamripper knows how to get track data from Shoutcast streams with meta-data. If it's a Shoutcast stream and you don't see the track names when you play in Winamp, then Streamripper won't know either.

Q: What's meta-data?

A: Meta-data means track data. I use the word meta a lot because in the Shoutcast server HTTP response header it has something called "meta-int" (meaning meta interval) which is often how meta/track data is sent in the stream.

Q: How does Streamripper get the track data/meta-data from Shoutcast streams?

A: I would really like to spend a day or two and write a formal doc on how this works. But the skinny is that for every x bytes (specified by the meta-int HTTP field) Shoutcast servers send the track data. If the track hasn't changed it sends a NULL byte. If there is track data you'll get a number > 0, which is the length of the meta data divided by 16. The multiplier is so they can fit the size within one byte. The meta-data field has two fields "StreamTitle" and "StreamURL". StreamURL IMO is useless, however the StreamTitle is the track name, and is used to make the separate tracks.

A: Go to the 'Winamp\Plugins' directory and delete the 'gen_sripper.dll' file
If you really want to purge your system you can also delete the 'sripper.ini' file (in the same folder), and the 'SrSkins' directory (1.50 and later)

You probably have a Start Menu folder named "StreamRipper32". Delete it and its contents (it contains at least one file "StreamRipper32" (a link to the program itself), and perhaps a playlist file called "relay.m3u").

You probably have a Program Files folder named "StreamRipper32". Delete it and its contents (it contains the following files: "authors", "copying", "install", "Readme", "stream2.jpg", "Streamripper_wireframeGFX.jpg", "StreamRipper32.exe", and "streamripper32.html").

In addition you'll have a file called "StreamRipper32.INI" somewhere (probably in your %systemroot% folder). To find it I'd do a search for it on your computer (on most Windows versions right-click the "Start" button on your taskbar (the button you use to start most programs) and choose something called "Search..." or similar). Delete the file.